


Mourning Best

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Gen, Siblings, spoilers for the End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death, smiles, and those of her family who die. A funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Best

  
There was once a girl who painted mourning on her face in long, thin crisscross black, like a thousand blank squares for tic-tac-toe connected and connected across an expanse of pale cheeks and a button nose.

But Death doesn't do that. She paints mourning on conservatively in pale, dull colours but makes up for it by putting on a bright red dress. And the smile.

Can't forget the smile.

  
Because a smile, you see, is important.

Oh, it's genuine, don't worry, a bittersweet slice of dulled colour framed by white skin. It's a constant in an overturning world; a little bit of familiarity she owes to her siblings and her friends in the Dreaming. (his old ravens are grieving)

But she won't show the devastation on her face, the quiet and utter break of her heart because she had to take her little brother who died, who died, who died.

Worlds end all the time, and Death's a Horsewoman, as the case may be. She's a constant who is constant and will be constant until the very end.

Did they forget he was a constant too?

  
More terrible than Death, they called him, and you don't get a reputation like that without becoming a fixture. He was tall, he was stern and proud, he was...

He was her brother, her starry-eyed brother with a voice cut out of velvet. He was a wealth of stories and tales. He was the Prince of Stories and the King of Dreams, Lord of the Realm of Dream and Nightmare...

He was her younger brother.

That's all there is to it.

  
Family. What a word. Loaded with hidden meanings and implications of complexity and complications.

They didn't know it when they first began but they learnt the truth about it soon enough.

Her family will be here this dreamtime, all except one. All except two. Two, that's right, because the brother born next after her is still alive, even if he's different, different and the same. (she heard that from Lucien)

But this funeral is for the brother who was next after her, and so here she is and the members of her family who will be here are here. Her siblings, and her great-niece and great-nephew.

As for her nephew--

  
She knew it the moment Orpheus died. She had been feeding Slim and Wandsworth, then there had been a snap, and she had _known_.

Mine now, she thought numbly.

She had promised not to take him over and look what happened. She shouldn't have promised, she shouldn't have entertained him, she shouldn't have let Destruction tell him about the clause.

Death knows when worlds fall. She's the Pale Rider, of course she knows. When constants fall, when pillars of support and basic tenets of belief fall like so many dominoes with all the roar and crash of destruction...

Her brother's world had cracked when he took Death's place, even just the once. He wasn't cut out for it, and it hadn't been his place to take because _his_ name wasn't _Death_, and his pride and sense of duty _shouldn't_ have bent enough to allow him to do it. But he did and he had, and she heard the crack.

Death hears many cracks these days.

  
There is only one time she can remember when their worlds all cracked at the same time.

It wasn't Destruction's fault, or rather, it wasn't just his alone. It was a fault in their making, tiny seams of stress running throughout their beings until Destruction had broken loose and couldn't go back. To be Endless is to be human endlessly. To be Endless is to live under their skin, in the day-by-day, and you can't do that without changing.

  
He called her to ask for advice once. Once. She wishes he had called more. Girl trouble, meaningless small talk, whatever.

This time he was wearing a furry boa.

She wanted to ask, but decided not to. Their relationship had been built on a delicate balance of courtesy and informality, and if he wanted to wear a fluffy boa, hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

Besides, it really didn't matter. The world was going out of control and Death had two boys to hunt down. She really couldn't care less about what Dream wore.

He always returned the courtesy. Always.

  
A few years ago she went to the park wearing a plain black top and black jeans. A soccer ball soared through the air and she had picked red flowers for her hair. The birds sang and congregated around her foolish, foolish younger brother who had taken a fall for her.

"My sister," he had said, haltingly, a little fearful. "It was not _me_ they wanted. It was you."

"I know," she'd told him.

  
It's the domino effect. One domino falls and takes out another one with it, which in turn takes out the next and so on. It's a good metaphor for reminiscing at a funeral and other things.

Even in death, the stars live on, an echo of past lives resonating through the universe long after they have gone.

Orpheus attends his father's funeral. (he's a good kid. they're all good kids save perhaps one of the ones who isn't here)

  
And so it is that Death speaks at her brother's funeral, with a smile upon her face, a smile that is familiar, yet strangely different. She speaks, sending her brother off, his shroud sailing to the stars and she above on the bridge serene.

For she is Death and she is set, as her brother was, in her own ways. She is Death, she is constant and she can't let them know one of the huge support beams of her world has been blown to pieces with the death of her brother. Her smile's real, and so's her grief, because Death is always real, but why not wear what looks best on her?

  
And then they woke up.

The guests and the dignitaries returning to the waking world, a story's length away, a knife edge of a border between.

And then they woke up.

She used to hate that ending. She hates the next one more.

And then they woke up, all except one.

  
She wears bright red, the one time she permits herself to do so. Destiny doesn't approve, she can tell. (but this isn't Destiny's realm)

(It's Dream's.)


End file.
